The London Stock Exchange (LSE) was taken down for a whole day last week after a systems outage followed by disaster recovery which failed to work. Many of us would recognize this situation as something we’ve lived through. Some of us may have lived this recently, maybe just weeks ago.
What’s interesting about the LSE’s outage is not so much that it happened but that at last commentators are asking tough questions of the boards of companies that allow themselves to be taken out by faulty systems. Shareholders are sure to follow, and a few high-profile directors are likely to be looking for a new job at short notice.
So they should. IT underpins absolutely everything a modern organisation does. Yet frequently, even those claiming to be eBusinesses tolerate appalling performance and frequent business interruption from their IT partners. I’m with El Reg on this one: while outages are often the partners’ fault, the buck can’t stop with them. It is the people who appoint them who are responsible for the results they’re getting.
Management at many organisations happily accept IT risks that are trivial to remove as unavoidable. Many plainly deny that there is anything that can be done about them, mindlessly repeating partners’ claims without judging whether those claims are made truthfully or as a defensive tactic. Would accepting the existence of a solution be an admission of guilt? This 21st century equivalent of the Earth is flat is happily swallowed whole by gullible boards all over the country. People that should know better, and should be proficient enough to know what is reasonable to demand from top suppliers, are consistently failing their shareholders, wasting the eye-wateringly large investments they’ve made in IT.
By outsourcing in the name of efficiencies not just the provision of IT but any and every shred of understanding about how IT systems work, they purposely leave themselves ill-prepared to make the fundamental decisions that would insulate them -and ultimately their shareholders- from damage caused by IT outages.
I’ve frequently advocated for eBusiness know-how to be placed at the core of every 21st century’s organisation worth its bacon. Today I’m repeating that pledge, but also asking shareholders and markets to be ruthless with the people who ignore that fundamental area of modern business. eBusiness and the IT that underpins it is business as usual. Ignorance is no longer an excuse. Keep up or get out.
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